[Aptitude-devel] Bug#325160: aptitude: Dependency resolution has problems with alternatives

[Josh Triplett]

On Wed, Jan 20, 2016 at 11:44:10PM +0000, Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo wrote:
> Control: tags -1 + moreinfo
> 
> 
> Hi both,
> 
> 2005-08-26 14:41 Peter Karlsson:
> >Package: aptitude
> >Version: 0.2.15.9-2
> >Severity: normal
> >
> >openoffice.org has a dependency on
> >
> > openoffice.org-l10n-en (>> 1.1.2+1.1.3) | openoffice.org-l10n-1.1.3
> >
> >I have installed openoffice.org-l10n-sv, which has
> >
> > Provides: openoffice.org-l10n-1.1.3, openoffice.org1.1-l10n-sv
> >
> >and thus fullfils the dependency. Everything is fine with apt-get:
> >
> > # apt-get -s dist-upgrade
> > Reading Package Lists... Done
> > Building Dependency Tree... Done
> > Calculating Upgrade... Done
> > 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
> >
> >Whereas aptitude is confused by the dependency, and wants me to install
> >openoffice.org-l10n-en:
> >
> > # aptitude -s dist-upgrade
> > Reading Package Lists... Done
> > Building Dependency Tree
> > Reading extended state information
> > Initializing package states... Done
> > Reading task descriptions... Done
> > The following NEW packages will be automatically installed:
> >   liblua50 openoffice.org-l10n-en
> > The following NEW packages will be installed:
> >   liblua50 liblualib50 openoffice.org-l10n-en
> > 0 packages upgraded, 3 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
> > Need to get 3622kB of archives. After unpacking 19.5MB will be used.
> >
> >[...]
> 
> 
> 2008-04-12 19:34 Josh Triplett:
> >Package: aptitude
> >Version: 0.4.11.1-1
> >Followup-For: Bug #325160
> >
> >I encounter this same problem with current aptitude.  For instance,
> >totem and totem-plugins both depend on totem-gstreamer | totem-xine
> >(with some versions attached to each).  I have totem and totem-xine
> >installed, but whenever I upgrade totem, aptitude wants to install
> >totem-gstreamer.
> 
> Have you observed this problem recently?
> 
> I haven't noticed it recently when installing similar packages (phonon
> backends come to mind), and I don't think that there are recent reports
> complaining about that either.
> 
> Between 2008-2010 the resolver system changed a great deal, so I think
> that the underlying problem might have been fixed during that time,
> without this report being closed; or perhaps libapt or an interaction
> between aptiude<->libapt being fixed.
> 
> If you still experience it, please confirm if it can be reproduced with
> the packages above (with the provision of changing names such as
> openoffice->libreoffice).

totem-xine no longer exists, so that specific instance no longer
applies.

I don't recall any recent examples where an upgrade wanted to change
which of a set of alternative dependencies I had installed, in the
absence of some other specific reason to not just upgrade the installed
alternative.